Cave-in
by 2short4astormtrooper
Summary: When Han and Leia are caught in a cave collapse on Hoth, they have to co-operate if they want to get out alive. And since they're both struggling with, well... complicated feelings for each other, this is going to be even more difficult than it sounds.
1. Chapter 1

Hoth was the coldest, most inhospitable planet Leia had ever visited. It was small, only slightly larger than Yavin IV. It was beautiful, shimmering, clothed in white and standing out against space's blue-black vacuum. And it was cold. Every breath burned your throat and lungs and seemed to freeze your blood.

Inside Echo Base wasn't much warmer than outside. The base was still under construction, and even the completed passageways were designed to be temporary; able to be abandoned at a moment's notice.

Still… the place had an odd appeal to it. There was something about the simplicity of the white snow and grey wall panels; the cold, dull steel lining the walls and support beams reaching, overarching, and curving down to the other side of the tunnel. The roof itself was hidden by a thick, grey tarpaulin, there to stop any ice falling and injuring someone walking by.

The soft snow on the floor crunched under Leia's boots as she walked along the newly dug tunnels. The sound was echoed behind her by another set of footsteps. Han's footsteps.

Construction on the base had stopped for the day, in this section anyway, and the tunnels were empty. Perfect. Leia turned to face Han. "What do you want, Solo?" She knew what he wanted.

"I want the money you promised me—I've been stuck on this ice-cube for weeks."

"Why should we pay you? When did we even promise you money?"

"Don't play dumb, your Holiness. It's been more than a year since I even 'joined' your rebellion," he said, making air quotes "And you promised me money right at the start."

Leia silently cursed Luke for even bringing Han to rescue her. Then she took it back—she'd be dead without them and everyone seemed to know it.

"Please stop calling this 'my' rebellion, it undermines everyone else's authority and isn't true, anyway." She took a deep breath and tried to calm down. "There's no reason you should be paid when no-one else is." Why does he have to be so selfish, Leia thought. He was just starting to seem likeable… even a little more than that… and then he does this. Command had been thinking that Han might come looking for money— But why did they have to leave me to deal with it? Leia's lifetime of politics and undercover work meant they thought she was the most qualified person for this, but her complicated feelings for Han meant she was likely not.

"Yeah, cause for all of them, fighting is its own reward or whatever. And they can't leave. I can, and I will. Don't doubt it." She didn't doubt him for a second and told him so.

"But I don't understand why you're so desperate to leave. The Alliance can give you protection if you need it, even if you're in debt."

"But I don't understand why you can't just pay me," he said, imitating her first words almost childishly. "I know you don't have a lot of money, but you must have enough for my reward."

"Fine. How much do you want?" asked Leia. She sounded as if she were going to start counting out credicoins. Han smirked.

"Five grand."

"We can't give you that much money. Do you think all of this was cheap?" She waved vaguely at the metal support beams and rough cladding on the walls around them. "The Alliance has little to no funds left, and I'm taking a risk just telling you this."

"Look, your worship, I don't know how you think you can fool me—"

"I'm not trying to fool you!" She wasn't. The rebels needed money and almost certainly couldn't pay Han. "We can't afford it."

"Alright, alright. What if we make a deal. You guys give me one of the new comm sets, and I stop asking for money." For a while at least. Han's services didn't come cheaply, and Leia knew he'd be asking for money again soon enough. Maybe it was better to reimburse him bit by bit than in large, expensive payments.

"Well, all of the comm sets have been installed on the base, but I have an idea."

"I'm listening."

"We have a couple of older sets that aren't in use right now. They're not as good as the Caster models, but they're certainly better than whatever you've got on—" Ice rumbled above their heads. It happened all the time on Echo Base, the rumbling, creaking and cracking of the ice providing ambient noise, but this was louder than anything either of them had heard.

A lump of snow dropped from the ceiling, landing at Han's feet. He studied the walls—bare and icy with metal support beams running up to the roof at regular intervals. Nothing out of the ordinary there. The roof, he knew, was the same. If you could see past the support beams and through the thick tarpaulin covering the places under construction, you'd see a whole lot of snow, a whole lot of ice, and not much else. Why had that snow fallen, then? The tarpaulin should have kept it out.

Leia looked up at him, half-frowning and almost imperceptibly biting the corner of her lip. Han was suddenly very aware of how alone they were, of how close they were standing. He felt the back of his neck heat up and shook his head. Don't get distracted.

Leia pretended not to notice and tried to continue the conversation. "I think they've started drilling in the next site over. Anyway—"

"Princess!" The two of them started, jumping back from each other as if caught discussing something other than money.

"3P0!" Leia said as a tall golden droid shuffled down the corridor towards them.

"Princess, I've been searching for you everywhere."

"I needed to talk to Han privately."

"General Rieekan wants to speak to you about—" The droid broke off as the ice rumbled again. It was louder this time, closer. She frowned uneasily.

"That sounds awfully close," C-3P0 said.

"Ssh!" Silence.

After a couple of seconds, Leia relaxed. "3P0, tell the General I'll be there in a minute, will you?"

"I'm sorry, Princess, but he asked for you to come straight away."

She sighed and pulled off her gloves, balling them up in one hand. "Han, we'll finish this later." She turned to leave, and the cave screamed. There was no other way to describe it—a long, drawn-out screech of shifting ice.

A clump of ice dropped from the ceiling. "Look up there—there's a tear in the tarpaulin." Han pointed and the three of them glanced up.

"Sir, I think that this cavern might not be entirely stable.

"Might not—" he began angrily.

"Shut up," Leia hissed. "He's right, and we need to be careful or we'll bring this whole tunnel down. Get out, now!" Another lump of snow fell, followed by a piece of ice, then another.

And another.

"Oh, holy—" His words were cut off as something crunched in the ice above them. Han and Leia threw themselves forward, trying desperately to get out of the danger zone. Then the ceiling cracked, rumbled, and caved in with the thunderous roar of falling ice.


	2. Chapter 2

Leia couldn't remember anything that happened after that, but she woke pinned under Han's unconscious body. Her thoughts felt thick and blurry. Han… something's happened. What happened? Her right arm hurt. It hurt a lot. She tried to focus, work out what she was doing, but her sight clouded and she fell back into darkness.

"Princess. Hey. Hey, your highness! Leia! Wake up! Oh, hell… you have to be OK…" She could just barely hear Han's voice over the ringing in her ears. He sounded far away, but she could feel a hand on her shoulder, grip almost too tight for comfort. He shook her gently, and a stab of pain shot from Leia's fingers to her neck. She took a sharp breath and managed to speak. "I'm alright."

The princess's voice was strained and clearly in pain. Leia was tiny, lying under a dusting of fallen ice with her dark hair spilling from its braids. It made a splash of dark colour across the floor. In the inky gloom, it looked far too much like blood. Han breathed a sigh of relief as she spoke, but didn't relax. "No, you're not. What is it?"

"Nothing. I'm fine." Her voice was shaking, and when Han took his hand from her shoulder, that tiny, abrupt gasp gave it away.

"Your arm. Stay still—it's hurt, maybe broken."

"I know," she spat and sat up.

Leia still hadn't opened her eyes, trying to hide the fact that they were watering with pain. It hurt. It hurt so much. But she'd had worse. At least, she'd had worse once, and she'd managed not to give any information away. This time, though, the pain was real. It wasn't just the interrogator droid playing with her mind, trying to convince her how much it hurt. This time, she actually was injured, and who knew how badly.

If you hadn't been watching carefully, you might not have noticed how much pain Leia was in. Her breathing was too fast, not quite regular, and her jaw was tense, but her face was still as stone and she didn't make a sound.

She supported her broken arm, holding it still against her chest with a shaking hand. Han noticed that her nails were bitten right down to the quick. She took a couple of deep breaths before saying "I think it's my shoulder—my collarbone maybe. Do you have something I can use as a bandage?"

Leia gritted her teeth, trying to ignore the dizziness that seemed to blur everything except the pain in her arm. Han passed her a black bandanna, and she folded it into a sling to support her arm. "Tie it," she ordered him. He knotted it behind her with gloved hands brushing the back of her neck.

"Are you hurt anywhere else?" Han asked. When she didn't answer straight away he spoke louder. "Are you—"

"No. I heard you the first time."

Silence fell, and Leia looked around. They were in a small, triangular cave, high enough on one side for her to stand comfortably with the roof sloping down to meet the ground at the other wall. It was maybe two metres long and wide enough to fit the two of them side by side. "How did this happen?"

"One of the support beams is stuck in the ice, and the tarpaulin tore and got stuck as well. I dragged you in here, but I got hit with a piece of snow, or rock, or something."

"You saved my life."

"I saved both our lives." Han surprised her with his flat tone. "For now."

"What do you mean?" She had an awful feeling she knew exactly what he meant.

"Unless someone finds us soon, we'll run out of air."

"No, we won't." It was dark in the cave, but not pitch black—Leia could look around, but the light had a filtered quality to it as if it had been reflected many times, and had to shine through some thick cloth like— "The tarpaulin! The light's shining through a hole in the ice, reflecting around a bit, and coming through the tarpaulin. That means air is too." She felt a sense of joy disproportionate to what she'd discovered, and grinned. Her arm still hurt, but the pain was beginning to fade.

"Good, but it also means our body heat won't warm up this space."

Leia half-laughed. She suddenly felt very, very unsteady, and she was starting to shake. Her arms and legs felt weak and quivery. Han swore under his breath.

"Leia, you're going into shock."

"No, I'm—alright, I am." She looked at her broken arm. "Help me with my belt?"

"What!?"

"Loosen any possibly restrictive clothing, it's part of the treatment for—oh." Heat spread down from her ears, around her neck and up to her cheeks.

"S-sure." Han swallowed. "OK." He moved to kneel right next to Leia. Carefully, he undid her belt and loosened it by one clip. He re-fastened it, trying (and failing) to keep his mind blank, something difficult when he could sense Leia's breathing, too fast to be normal, and feel her breath on the back of his neck.

With Han's hair almost brushing her chin, Leia was having trouble keeping her thoughts straight, although hopefully, that was from shock or a concussion. Something—anything—other than Han's nearness and his hands at her waist. Her heart was racing, and her stomach seemed to have jumped up to her chest.

"You're shaking," Han said, looking up. They were almost eye-to-eye now, with only a few inches of space between them.

"It's not from shock," she said without thinking.

"Isn't it? Why are you shaking then?" asked Han, apparently innocent. "Is it the same reason your breathing's irregular?"

"My breathing is not irregular. It's fine, and this is not the time to be… to be…" Leia searched desperately for a word. The ringing in her ears was back, and she was finding it hard to concentrate.

"To be what, princess?"

"To be… Han!" She threw both hands up in exasperation—or tried to. Her whole right side flared with pain and she doubled over, gasping.

"Leia!"


	3. Chapter 3

Leia's eyes were shimmering and glassy with tears not of grief but of pain. Her broken arm was tucked into her stomach and her other hand was flat on the ground, supporting her. "That was…" she groaned, and couldn't finish her sentence. "I—I—"

"You have to stay with me, OK?" It hurt Han to see her in pain, but he had to put his feelings aside. "You can't black out on me, I need you awake. We have to get out of this alive, and… I'm going to need your help."

She took another couple of deep breaths and blinked. She'd heard him—the ringing in her ears seemed to be getting louder—and heard what he'd said. _He needs my help._ She understood how much it must have meant for Han, to tell her that. He valued independence almost above safety. "OK, flyboy, you need my help, I need yours." She straightened up and pushed the pain in her arm to the back of her mind. "Sorry. Are you hurt?"

"I've got a damn sore head, but apart from that, I'm fine."

"Great. Are you dizzy at all?"

"I'm a bit, uh, disoriented."

Leia sighed. "What a pair. You've probably got a concussion, I've probably got one too, and I've got a broken arm…"

"Do you know where 3P0 is?"

"No, how would I? He's either crushed under ice, or he's escaped or he's in a cave, just like us, waiting to be rescued, just like us, sitting on his—"

"Alright! No need to get mad." Han leaned back, seemingly relaxed. "Just wondering." Leia was suddenly infuriated at his constant calm.

"We could die here, you know? No-one's going to come and look for us—how do we even know if there are still people left to look for us? The whole base could have been crushed."

"Do you have a commlink? Mine's broken."

Leia seemed to deflate. She felt at her side and pulled a commlink from her belt. "It's only a short-wave one; the signal might not get through all the ice."

"Try it anyway."

"I am!"

The commlink crackled with static as she turned it on. "This is Leia Organa to Echo Base. Do you copy?" Static. "This is Leia Organa to Echo Base. Do you copy?"

Static.

Silence.

Then: "Copy, this is Echo Base. What—" the connection fizzed and broke for a second "Situation?"

Frowning, Leia said, "Sorry, but I need your security code." Han sighed, and she could almost hear him roll his eyes. "What?" she demanded over the sound of static from the commlink. "For all we know, that collapse was the Empire getting into the base."

"Alright. But we're gonna die if someone doesn't get us out of here… even rescue by Imperials is better than no rescue at all."

With the commlink in her hand, Leia stared at the ground. "I'd rather die here than go back to the Death Star," she said quietly.

The commlink fizzed with static again, and the code came through. "What's your situation?"

"There was a cave collapse in the west quadrant. The roof of the tunnel we were in has collapsed, and Captain Han Solo and I are stuck here. I have a broken arm but I've treated it as best I can, and we think we both have mild concussions."

"Copy that. We're scanning a collapse in your quadrant for lifeforms, but the ice is making it hard to get a reading. We'll… you…" The transmission dissolved into static.

"No signal," Leia said.

"Well, they haven't been taken over by the Empire, and they know we're missing now, and we've got air, so there's nothing to worry about. We just have to wait it out here until they find us." Han was still optimistic.

The ice overhead rumbled. "I know what you're going to say, your Worship, and that happens all the time, remember?"

"I wasn't going to say anything."

The next few minutes passed in chilly silence, quite literally. The temperature seemed to have dropped even further than normal. Leia shivered. "Has it gotten colder in here?"

"Probably, but I'm not cold."

"No, it's just my hands and… my leg," she said, looking down. The knee of her snowsuit was torn and the skin underneath was grazed. "Great."

"How come neither of us saw that earlier?" Han asked, ashamed he hadn't noticed either.

"Having a fractured shoulder is kind of distracting." Leia's sarcasm could be as deadly a weapon as her blaster.

"Al_right_, princess." He paused, then pulled her leg towards him and tugged off his gloves.

"What are you doing?"

"What'd'you think, your highness?" Han tossed Leia his gloves.

"I have no idea…"

She forced herself to keep a blank expression—Han was, well, comforting, though she'd never have admitted it.

"I'm looking at your knee. If you're cold, put my gloves on."

"No, they're yours and I'm fine."

"Put them on, your worship, you might be in shock and you need to keep warm."

Leia scowled but slid her good hand into one of the gloves. The inside was still warm, and her fingers tingled as they began to heat up. "…Thank you."

He didn't reply but stretched the fabric of her snowsuit as tight as it would go around her leg, showing the entire graze. In the darkness, neither of them could see how bad it was as shadows fused with blood.

"It's too dark in here. I can barely see, and my eyes haven't adjusted to the dark."

"You could wait until they do."

"I don't know if they will. It was darker than we noticed in that tunnel—I think it must be almost pitch black in here, but our eyes are used to it. I think this is as good as it's going to get."

Leia groaned. "How did I forget?" She pulled two light cells out of a pocket on her leg. One was crushed into a mess of wires and plastoid, but the other was undamaged. "It'll last… four hours, maybe?"

She flicked it on, and it seemed as if a small star had lit up the cave. Leia let go of the cell and shielded her eyes as he cell hit the ground and flickered out, and she dropped her hand. Han had disappeared, the walls of the cave had disappeared… she couldn't even see, cliché though it sounded, her hand in front of her face. She swore several times. "I can't see. Han…"

"I can't either. I hope it's…" _I hope it's not permanent._

"I don't think so. Wait, and let your eyes adjust." The blackness was dizzying. It seemed to work its way into their heads, taking their sense of balance and eating away at Leia's composure. She took a deep breath and slid her hand into the darkness to find something—anything—to calm herself.

**A/N: Hi. I have absolutely nothing to say for myself as to why I didn't do this earlier. I should have said this months ago. I'm probably going to discontinue this until further notice. I have another half chapter which I'm going to post. If I have time and motivation I'm going to continue this next year.**


	4. Chapter 4

She found Han's shoulder.

He jumped, startled, when he felt something touch his chest, then move up and grip his arm. "What—"

"It's just me." She didn't ask him if he was scared of the dark—everyone was afraid of something, and in darkness like this…

"That's good, I thought for a second that perhaps Darth Vader had appeared out of nowhere and was gently touching my arm." That was Han, alright. There was something calming about his sarcasm, but—

"Vader's not something to joke about." She hated the way her voice sounded in that moment: childish, with none of the authority she'd tried to convey. The truth was… this darkness was far too much like Vader. When he'd boarded the _Tantive IV_, she'd almost felt him, felt his presence as all-encompassing darkness like the one surrounding them now. And then, on the Death Star, hours and hours of that darkness as… no, it would be unfair to tease Han about being afraid of the dark, given how much she feared it.

**A/N: Well, that's it so far. I do hope to come back to this if I have time, and I hope anyone reading this will check out my other work (semi-shameless self-promotion)**


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